Two Comments, One Ordinary Post

The post I published after the honest one was about spring cleaning. I mean that sincerely, I wrote four hundred words about going through my bathroom cabinet and throwing away a mascara that had been in there since 2009. It had a bullet-point list. It was fine. It was exactly the kind of thing this blog does when it is not trying to be anything.

He commented on that one too. Not much, something short, something that didn't reference the previous comment at all. Just a normal thing to say about a normal post. And I sat there at my desk and pulled up both comments side by side and read them twice and I couldn't figure out what to do with the distance between them. One was 'I didn't expect this from this blog. Please keep going.' The other was the kind of thing you say when a post is fine. Both from the same name. Same person, presumably, sitting somewhere on the other side of a screen I will never see.

Leaned back. Thinking about it too long, as usual.

I think what got me, what is still getting me, honestly, is that he came back. That is the part I keep returning to. Not the first comment, which I have re-read enough times that I have it memorized without meaning to. The second one. The ordinary one. Because the first comment could be a one-time thing, could be a moment, could be someone passing through. But you don't leave a comment on a spring cleaning post unless you actually came back.

I wrote 'not for the blog' at the top of this note and then looked at it for a long time. Then I deleted that part. Then I typed it again. It is still there now at the top of this draft and I am deciding, as I always seem to be deciding, whether the thing I am about to say out loud is the thing I am allowed to say out loud. The answer this time is probably yes. It usually ends up being yes.